


Lights Will Guide You Home

by roseandheather



Category: Code Black (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7195583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandheather/pseuds/roseandheather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More bleeding, and bullets, and sober newscasts and prayers.</p><p>It's far too familiar for comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lights Will Guide You Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Orlando, and San Bernardino, and Tucson and Aurora and Sandy Hook. This is for the families and the doctors, the victims and the police officers and the first responders. For the heroes of the tragedies.
> 
> This is for everyone who hears the news and thinks, 'Oh, God, not another one.'
> 
> Maybe, someday, the cycle will break.
> 
> Until then, we grieve.

It's far past dark when she knocks on the door.

"Come in," he calls, and somewhere inside the bone-deep weariness she feels a spark of something that might be relief.

She can't do much more than lean against the doorframe. Everything hurts, and she can't seem to move.

"How many?"

His voice is impossibly gentle as he rises from his chair, as he walks over to her with a pack of baby wipes in hand. Carefully he cleans the smears of blood from her temple, her cheeks, the curve of her neck and the dip of her collarbone.

"Three so far," she says, and her voice is raw and hoarse. "And we might lose two more by morning."

"I'm sorry I couldn't be there," he says, and the _for you_ doesn't need to be said.

"It's alright," she says, because it is. "You had other things to deal with."

He had; the media, law enforcement, cameras and reporters and crying relatives. He'd been an island of calm in a sea of despair, and as much as she'd wished for him there beside her, she could never ask him to be anything other than what he is.

Had his jacket been off when she came through the door? She can't remember now, doesn't know why it matters. He sinks into a large leather armchair, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, his shoes abandoned, and looks up at her.

"Leanne, come here."

She goes.

He draws her into his arms with the tenderness and care of a long, steady relationship, and she sinks into him with a quiet sob of relief. Curled up in his lap, her head on his shoulder, his breath in her hair, the world feels infinitely safer and less frightening.

"It hurts," she says at last, into the starched cotton of his shirt. "It always hurts."

"I know."

"Ed, when does it _stop?_ "

"I don't know, baby," he admits, and the pain in his own voice punctures something deep inside her.

Her breath hitches, then breaks, and she buries her face in his shoulder as the tears finally come.

"Why?" she asks raggedly, even as her voice clogs with tears. "It's always the _same!_ The same b-roll, of grieving families and wailing sirens and candlelight vigils. Always the same tweets, the same _words,_ the same goddamn platitudes that never get _anything_ done. Prayers don't put blood back in people's arteries, or heal bones, or stitch up bullet wounds, Ed! Over and over and _over_ again, and nothing _ever_ changes. It's the same speeches and the same promises and then a few months later we're right back here again, a nation grieving and mourning and making promises we never keep. And it _hurts!_ This shouldn't be familiar. I shouldn't be numb to more sober news anchors and presidential addresses. But I am, and it _scares_ me."

"I know," he says, and he does.

"When does it stop?" she asks, and sounds like a frightened child. "It's not going to get better, is it?"

"Maybe someday," says Ed, the burning core of idealism he's never quite been able to surrender. "Maybe someday it will. But no, it probably won't get better after this. Or only just a little." He strokes her hair, and the aching, ragged edges of her soul dull just a little. "We plug holes, Leanne. And if there's one thing that helps me, it's remembering that the good guys far outnumber the bad. One person opens fire and you have people lining up around the block to donate blood. There _is_ more goodness than evil out there, no matter what it looks like now."

She shakes, just a little, and he presses a kiss to the crown of her hair. "And you're not numb to it, Leanne. Maybe right now it feels like you are. But you're here, and you're grieving, and you're scared and hurt and angry. And it's too familiar, and it will pass, and soon enough it will happen again. But you can still grieve. You can still cry. And that matters, too."

"Don't let go."

It's all she can say.

"I won't."

He doesn't.


End file.
